Instead of blocking sign-ups we can have Lemmy’s sign up automatically recommend other servers.
Another developer and I already have a PR in development for it.
Here’s the idea in more detail: Imagine the following:
- Servers declare a target number of users/posts-per-day (enables programmatically detecting when other people’s servers are generally under/over capacity)
- Severs have a recommender list of other servers (whitelist), separate and more exclusive than their non-blocked list
Whenever someone goes to the sign up page, for example, on Lemmy.world, we:
- look at the recommender list
- find the server that is most under capacity
- have a very large iframe with "Sign up for Lemmy (using [under capacity server here])"
- have a small “No, I want to sign up specifically on Lemmy.world” option
AND, as a precaution against maybe-malicious takeovers (e.g. a Facebook server saying it has unlimited capacity and all new users getting forwarded to them) a server can set it’s own maximum recommender caps; e.g. “recommended” servers won’t be recommended if they’re above 10,000 users even if they claim they could handle more.
Thoughts?
infotainment@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Attitudes like this are much worse for the health of the Fediverse, IMO.
A popular instance with users and content? Kill it immediately, we can’t risk people actually using the Fediverse.